Sunday, July 22, 2012

Cicada Summer

In casual conversation with a neighbor on the sidewalk before my house, he noticed--keen sighted for a man in his early 70s--an insect on the tree trunk behind me on my lawn. I turned to investigate and discovered a cicada newly emerged from its simulacrum, drying its new-born wings beside the phantom of its old body which had crawled out of the ground after perhaps six years as a grub and nymph. It had crawled up the trunk about seven feet from the base and attached itself there facing the street. An odd and rather vulnerable place. It was a rare chance, I thought, to see a cicada beside its cast off shell, and I am grateful to my neighbor's sharp sight. Our conversation continued apace, some of it dealing with cicadas, all the while I was thinking I should try and take a picture. We parted and I did manage to take a few photographs. My camera, an old, inexpensive digital model, was not adequate for the job, but enough to capture the moment. A few minutes after taking the pictures, the cicada disappeared. Now when I listen to the cicada in the trees, I think it might be this very one, together with the other harbingers of heat in their short life of a few weeks.

I wrote two haiku inspired by this sight:

New born wings, poised, warm,Beside aged nymphal shroudClinging to silence.

Chumley's Rest

On Books

Henry James Quotes

The only success worth one's powder was success in the line of one's idiosyncrasy. Consistency was in itself distinction, and what was talent but the art of being completely whatever it was that one happened to be? One's things were characteristic or were nothing.

-The Next Time (Story originally published in The Yellow Book; issued in his collection Embarrassments, 1896.)

"We know too much about people in these days; we hear too much. Our ears, our minds, our mouths, are stuffed with personalities. Don't mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself." (R. Touchett)